


Five Mutant Sedoretu

by Walutahanga



Category: A Fisherman of the Inland Sea - Ursula K. Le Guin (Short Story), X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Break Up, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Developing Relationship, F/F, F/M, Foursome, M/M, Multi, Other, Past Relationship(s), Polyamory Negotiations, Relationship Negotiation, Sedoretu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 04:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3235688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walutahanga/pseuds/Walutahanga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four relationships in the X-Men universe that didn't work out, and one that did. Fusion with Ursula K Le Guin's "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Divided

**Author's Note:**

> An X-Men fusion with Ursula K Le Guin's story "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea", obviously. If you're unfamiliar with that universe, details can be found here: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sedoretu
> 
> To give a brief summary, in this world marriages are made up of four people; two men and two women. There must be one man and one woman of the Evening moiety, and one man and one woman of the Morning moiety. Members are expected to form sexual relationships with those of the opposite moiety while maintaining a platonic relationship with the person of their own moiety.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charles and Raven are of the Morning moiety. Moira and Erik are Evening moiety.

Charles and Raven had always known they would marry. Both of the Morning moiety, it wasn’t a question of _if_ they would marry, but a question of _which_ Evening man and woman would join them.

Then Moira walked into the bar where Charles was getting wasted. She was a slim, driven Evening woman, aware enough of her beauty to use it but never making the mistake of relying on it. And only a few hours later, Charles was diving into the ocean to drag out a dangerously attractive Evening man who stared at Raven and Charles with smoldering desire.

It was like providence and fate and every romantic movie ever all rolled into one. Who were Charles and Raven to say no?

The trouble was, unfortunately, Erik. That he wanted them was never in doubt, but it was never just about them. 

In some ways, this was a good thing. With Raven, Erik pushed her to accept herself as she was, to explore the full depths of her abilities. In other ways it was a _terrible_ thing. With Charles, he acted like there was a game being played out between them whose rules could change at any second. He listened during their debates, but only to turn Charles’ points around on him, and he wasn’t satisfied to agree to disagree. He wanted Charles to yield everything to him, and while the intensity of his focus was incredibly exciting sometimes, other times it became stifling.

It was Moira, unexpectedly, that Erik was most kind to. Although he nagged Charles into performing a discrete DNA check to ensure that she could produce mutant children, Erik never afterward referred to her humanity, much in the same way one would never refer to a terrible deformity. He was the first to check that his Evening sister was wearing a coat when she left the house and the first to tear into a mutant for a mistake in training with even a remote possibility of harming her.

Once, drifting on Erik’s surface thoughts, Charles noticed an association in Erik’s mind between Moira and the memory of an older woman with a kind, care-worn face. The fierceness of Erik’s thoughts was startling, the _never-never-never-again_ that echoed in his subconscious. Charles wasn’t entirely sure it was healthy but he would be the first to admit how impossible it is to prevent one’s mind making its own connections, so he let it slide. Surely as time passed Erik would start to see Moira as her own person, not an echo of his beloved mother.

Then the beach happened and everyone’s illusions fell apart. Erik took Raven away, strangled Moira’s trust, and crippled Charles’ legs.

Months later at the mansion, Charles looked into Moira’s eyes and bitterly foresaw their future together; an Evening woman and a Morning man living together, waiting on the other half of their sedoretu, much as Charles and Raven once had waited, except worse. A half-life with a cripple. He couldn’t do that to Moira, whatever she thought she wanted.

So he erased her memories and sent her back to the CIA. Without the memory of Charles and Raven and Erik, she might form another sedoretu one day.

Charles already knew he never would.


	2. Never Dared

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raven and Hank are Morning moiety. Azazel is Evening moiety.

Raven would never tell Charles this, but he wasn’t her only option. 

There was also sweet, funny Hank, who was the only man of her moiety who ever connected with her as well as Charles and in some ways better. He’d listen when Charles didn’t and made her feel special, not something to be taken for granted. She kissed his cheek and thought with a rush of affection ‘I could marry this one’.

Years later, when she grew apart from Erik and took up with Azazel, she kept in touch with Hank. By letters sometimes, phone calls other times. Rarely, visits. Charles was too far sunk into his addiction to notice.

She eventually insisted on introducing Hank and Azazel properly and watched a shy mutual attraction form between the Evening and Morning man. Hanks was steadfast where Azazel was whimsical, Azazel passionate where Hank was timid. Their lacks balanced each other out. Not since Charles, Erik and Moira had she looked at a potential sedoretu and thought ‘yes, this could work’. They would have to find an Evening woman, but Raven was confident one would come along eventually.

It was Azazel who said no to her half-formed plans.

“Hank cannot love himself,” he said matter of factly. “I like him very much, but if he cannot love himself as he is, how can he love us as we are?”

He indicated his red skin, her blue scales, and it was like waking from a pleasant dream to cold hard reality. Hank despised himself and hated looking the way he looked. He’d love her and Azazel without question, but he’d also want them to hide, to fit in, to _pretend_. It was the entire reason she’d left him in the first place.

She put her plans aside with the rest of her discarded dreams of sedoretu and families and love.

(She never knew that Hank was thinking tentatively about a life lived bravely as he waited for a phone call that never came).

 


	3. Betrayed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Angel are Evening moiety. Darwin and Emma are Morning moiety.

Alex had never expected to find a sedoretu. After a lifetime of rejection – too angry, too withdrawn always something – he wasn't dumb enough to get his hopes up. Just because the mutants have one thing in common doesn’t mean they’ll share anything else.

Then his first morning at the compound he was introduced to a funny, gorgeous Morning man who introduced himself as Darwin and it was like a fire leapt to life. Alex had always taken care never to want anything that couldn’t be taken away, and now found himself helplessly _desperately_ wanting the unobtainable. It was ridiculous, of course. Darwin had a steady job and a useful, non-harmful mutant power. He was easy-going with a sunny disposition and a big family with dozens of cousins and siblings. Alex had absolutely nothing to offer except a criminal record, anger issues on top of abandonment issues, and powers he could barely control.

Darwin didn’t seem to notice Alex’s gruff attempts to keep him at a distance. He seemed to find the Evening man’s prickly snappishness amusing and kept right on talking to him, picking up the slack in conversation when Alex didn’t.

“What do you want?” Alex said finally, bewildered that Darwin was still hanging round.

“You’re pretty, but not too bright,” Darwin said. He hooked a finger in Alex’s belt loops and tugged him a step closer. “Allow me to clarify.”

Being wanted was a revelation, and it only got better when Charles and Erik brought back an Evening sister back from one of their road-trips.

Alex was prepared to feel jealous when some of Darwin’s attention switched to Angel but the jealousy never came, perhaps because she just seems to _fit_ in some mysterious way. She was brash and defensive in all the ways that Alex recognised in himself. Here, he thought, was someone who’d been as hurt like he had. Of all the Evening women he’d met, she was the first he’d ever felt really got him. It wasn’t sexual – he’d be worried if it was – but it was a bone deep comfort, a feeling that he didn’t need to explain or justify anything to her. It wasn’t trust yet, but it soon would be.

So he would always blame himself when Darwin died, and he would always blame Angel for walking away with Darwin’s killer.

Angel found him years later, hand-in-hand with an Evening woman with skin as pale as snow and chilly blue eyes.

“This is Emma,” Angel said. “I thought you should meet.”

Alex looked at Emma and felt that burn again. Ice instead of fire, but no less compelling. The thought crossed his mind that he could fall for her in all he ways he fell for Darwin.

“Get out of here,” he said roughly and Angel’s face fell.

“Alex, I thought maybe we could –”

“I don’t care what you thought. Shaw killed my Morning lover. Now get out of here before I kill yours.” 


	4. Bad Timing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Logan and Jean are Morning moiety. Scott and Storm are Evening moiety.

Logan tried. He really did. Trouble was, he was no good at sedoretu. Not ones meant to last.

He teased Scott too much in the beginning, letting him think Logan was an Evening man like him and therefore competition. To be fair, Jean had helped with that little joke, getting way too much amusement out of pretending to be attracted to a man of her own moiety. Then when Storm unwittingly blew the whole thing, Scott was furious and flat out ignored Logan’s overtures. 

“Congratulations” Storm told him that night in her room. “At this rate, we can all skip the wedding and jump straight to divorce. Are you always this smooth?”

“Usually worse,” Logan admitted, and rolled them over to distract the Evening woman the best way he knew how.

When Logan returned from Alkali Lake, Scott seemed to have cooled down some and though he was a little snippy, he wasn’t outright hostile. This time he didn’t threaten to blast Logan when Logan tried to kiss him in the garage (“At this rate, you’ll be getting laid in ten years,” Ororo said dryly. “And he’ll marry us in about fifty.”)

Logan dared to be hopeful as he settled down to sleep that night. When Storm and Jean got back from Boston and Scott got back from his trip with the Professor, Logan would ask them to sit down and talk things out. And maybe, just maybe, the next time Logan tried to kiss Scott, he wouldn’t say no.

Then Stryker happened.

Things never quite worked out after that. 


	5. Just This Once

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rogue, John and Peter are Evening moiety. Bobby and Kitty are Morning moiety.

It hurt when John left. Rogue’s mother used to say that your first moiety isn’t necessarily your last, but oh, it _felt_ like it.

Rogue blamed herself. If she’d been able to touch, then maybe John would have felt closer to his Evening sister and therefore more connected with his sedoretu.

Kitty quietly grew into the void of his passing, so slowly that Rogue and Bobby didn’t notice at first. She was just there, warm and thoughtful and kind, and so steady after John’s irritability. Bobby felt like he could rely on her, the woman of his own moiety, and Rogue felt a bright spark of attraction. Kitty didn’t blame Rogue when she went to get the cure. Nor did she celebrate. She just said ‘as long as this is what you want’ and never asked again. When Pete drifted into their orbit and settled where John used to be, it felt perfectly natural. He was steady and kind and everything Rogue ever wanted from an Evening brother.

It wasn’t perfect. They fought sometimes – Kitty couldn’t stand Bobby’s perfectionist streak and Bobby got impatient with Rogue’s moods and there are days Pete just wanted them all to leave him alone with his art – but they never fought more than they were happy together. They split up briefly for college but came back together a few years later and Pete said they should move in together, so they did. 

They agreed to marry if kids come along, but they were in no hurry. There were sleep-ins on weekends and dinners on Fridays and occasional road trips to visit parents out of state. They bought two dogs that they named after famous landmarks, and made brave, if futile, attempts at gardening.

Once John called Rogue from prison. It was the first time they talked since he left with Magento all those years ago. They spent a few minutes chatting, an oddly relaxed exchange of information about how everyone from school was doing.

“Are you happy, Rogue?” He asked at the end, voice low and rough, and she realised he really wanted to know.

“Yes,” she said. “I am.”

And she was. 


End file.
